Grocery shoppers will pay an average of 15 percent more for chicken, turkey and other poultry meat this year with bird flu as a factor, said the Agriculture Department on Monday. Its monthly Food Price Outlook report pegged grocery price inflation at 10.5 percent, the highest since 1979, but forecast that it will fall to a more-normal 2.5 percent in 2023.
“An ongoing outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has reduced the U.S. egg-layer flock, and the poultry flock to a lesser extent. This outbreak has contributed to elevated egg prices and increasing poultry price,” wrote USDA economists. Some 40.13 million birds in 38 states have died from HPAI infections or cullings of domestic flocks since early February.
In its first forecast of food prices in 2023, the USDA predicted all food prices would rise by an average 3 percent throughout the year, compared to prices this year, and grocery prices would rise by 2.5 percent. Those rates would be close to the 20-year average of a 2.4 percent annual rise in the all-food index and a 2 percent increase in grocery prices.